Baratunde Thurston, Tanner Colby and Raquel Cepeda host Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race or The Show About Race, for short.
Composite: Stuart Tracte & Heather Weston

There’s an ongoing national conversation about race and each week you can tune in and take part in that conversation thanks to the aptly-named podcast, Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race or The Show About Race, for short. Hosted by authors Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina), Baratunde Thurston (How to Be Black), and Tanner Colby (Some of My Best Friends Are Black), the show is a comfortable venue for what can be uncomfortable conversations about life in what the show calls “pre-post-yet-still-very-racial America”.

Why you should listen

“It started with Baratunde and I. He wrote his book How To Be Black and about the same time my book Some Of My Best Friends Are Black came out,” said Colby. “We did a live event together with the same name, Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race.”

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For his part, Thurston remembers a bit differently: “A friend asked me to blurb Tanner’s book, but when I saw the name ‘Tanner Colby’ I thought, this isn’t going to work out. There’s no way a white guy named Tanner Colby can possibly write about race.” He changed his mind after reading the book, and the two authors forged a friendship built partially out of frustration with the news press circuit that followed the release of their books, because in Colby’s opinion the talking heads’ TV chatter “bears no relation to the actual conversations that people have in their real lives”.

To foment actual conversations about race, Thurston and Colby decided to do a series of live events across the county, but the series lasted for only one event. “Turns out we weren’t very good event planners,” admitted Colby, so they decided to do a podcast instead. They invited Cepeda to join the show to help speak for both women and Latino voices, and she leapt at the opportunity. “My voice isn’t really represented at all when it comes to these discussions in the mainstream,” said Cepeda. “It’s perplexing because we represent such a growing population of the American public.”

Because it’s a national show for a broad audience, the Show About Race is adamantly inclusionary, which extends to the hosts who are multiracial and interracial. “It’s what makes us unique,” said Cepeda. “Most or all of the other podcasts that center on the subject of race, ethnicity and American identity focus on a very binary, black and white conversation.” The newly formed trio (“We became a race Voltron,” said Thurston) partnered with Slate audio, who provided the technical expertise, and their conversation about race became a national one.

“We wanted the show to be a candid, casual, real conversation between real people, not these canned, left v right shouting matches you see on CNN every night,” explained Colby. Every other week or so, the show tackles a new topic whether it’s political correctness in comedy, Bill Cosby or even a story on This American Life; the three hosts and their occasional guests (comedian Jay Smooth and writer Farai Chideya have been on recently) gather around microphones and offer critiques, commentary and even comedy. The hosts don’t shy away from argument, but engage in the kind of civil discourse that is actually fruitful and informative, instead of simply argumentative.

While the show didn’t necessarily start as a forum for responding to current events, the recent news cycle – from Rachel Dolezal to police brutality in Baltimore to the death of Walter Scott in South Carolina – has given the show a lot to talk about. “We cover the news cycle a lot more than we set out to, because American news is the racial gift that keeps on giving,” said Thurston. The show has an every-other-week format so they can use the time between episodes to really think about the issues and come in ready to talk about the news, not just report it. “We don’t want to be beholden to what’s going on in the news, which is what makes us fresh,” said Cepeda. “We’re not just covering something and dropping it, we’re unpacking it slowly, coming back to it, changing our minds and positions over time.”

In addition to their biweekly podcast, the show also does a regular feature they call the B-Side, where the hosts respond to listeners’ questions and critiques. “It can’t really be a conversation if we’re the only ones talking,” said Thurston. “We wanted a formal part of the show that integrates our listeners’ thoughts, contributions and criticism.”

These episodes work as a system of checks and balances for the hosts, letting them reflect on the show and make sure they are serving the needs of their audience. “When you listen to those B-Sides as a block, you’ll realize the show is not very news cycle-driven at all,” said Thurston. “It’s very personal – people are talking about how they are raising their kids, talking about what happened in school, dealing with police themselves, or they are police.”

Blending politics and the personal to create a safe space for difficult, fruitful conversations is a balancing act, but the hosts are up for the task. “It’s very challenging,” said Cepeda. “But I like the challenge.”

Subscribe to Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race on iTunes

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